NOTES OF THE WEEK

system is severally adopted and the possibility of combining the two are now being investigated. But it is not easy to get at the figures because two systems of patients' payments exist under two different names. In the one a fixed charge is made, but enforced only at discretion; in the other a free-will offering is asked for, but, equally at discretion, waived. Now, is there any essential difference except in name? Some hospitals like to boast that they do not adopt patients' payments. But, financially, is their revenue less from the patients than that of those hospitals which seem


NOTES OF THE WEEK.
MR. AUBREY HERBERT, in a letter to the "Times" last Saturday, mentions a name in connection with our astonishing Indian policy which might throw considerable light on the situation if, unfortunately, the name itself were not as dark as it is. Sir Basil Zaharoff is for the vast majority even of the well-informed a man of mystery ; and not all his intimate and, indeed, dominating association with various branches of nominally British trade and commerce and manufacture has brought his personality any nearer public comprehension.
It is probable, however, that he is still more closely connected with British foreign policy even than with British trade, if the two can be separated as other than cause and effect ; and Mr. Aubrey Herbert's letter, coupled with the veiled allusions contained in Mr. Montagu's speech in defence of his publication of the Indian cable, makes it apparent to the careful reader that the power at this moment behind the dictatorship of Mr. Lloyd George is none other than this mysterious personage.
Everybody is aware of the famous pledge uttered by Mr. Lloyd George in January, 1918, affirming that we were "not fighting to deprive Turkey of its capital, or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace, which are predominantly Turkish in race." Everybody is aware that on the strength of that pledge the Mahommedan troops of India fought and died in the service of British foreign policy. Yet scarcely was the war over and won than by the Treaty of Shes Mr. Lloyd George consented to the occupation of Smyrna by the Greeks and gave Thrace to M. Venizelos.
It, is little wonder that the Indian Mahommedans, as Mr. Marmaduke Pickthall authoritatively informs us, have been staggered almost to desperation by the breach of faith. Even less than Mr. Lloyd George's pledges carry here in this country can they be expected henceforward to carry in India. But the reasons of the breach, the inducements that weighed with Mr. Lloyd George, appear now to have been less British than Greek and to have been opposed chiefly by the more or less secret Council associated explicitly with Sir Basil Zaharoff *** That Mr. Lloyd George has consciously or deliberately betrayed the British Empire we should be the last to affirm. He is above our suspicion as a patriot ; and we can even descry through the fog in which his policy is enveIoped a consistent attempt to make the best of a Stephens .
bad business. Moreover, we agree with Mr. Aubrey Herbert and the critics of Mr. Montagu that all reason is not on the side of the Indian Mohammedans, and that it is intolerable that the foreign policy of this highly complex Empire should be dictated from one part of another.
On the other hand, what we complain of is that Mr. Lloyd George so often seems to sacrifice one part and a greater part to another part and a lesser part, and this €or reasons that nobody but himself, perhaps, can clearly follow. The problem presented by Turkey in relation to Greece, for example, is difficult enough; but is a solution of it good statesmanship that immediately intensifies the far greater problem of India ? Let us suppose that it was urgent to reconcile the demands of Sir Basil Zaharoff with the status of the British Empire in Greece and Asia Minor, it was surely much more urgent to reconcile the resulting compromise with the status of the British Empire in India. What, in fact, Mr. Lloyd George lacks is an integral mind that grasps the situation as a whole. Without regard to the body of the Empire he patches up a settlement here and a settlement there, and on each occasion creates by his very settlement a fresh and often a much greater problem elsewhere. All problems are urgent in the world-crisis through. which we are attempting to pass ; but there is an order even in their urgency ; and to sacrifice the greater to the lesser urgency is precisely the fault to which a partial mind like Mr. Lloyd George's is most prone. Compared with Turkey itself, India is from every conceivable point of view the problem of major urgency and importance. A child can understand the reasons. "Settle" the Indian problem and the Turkish problem is almost settled in the same stride.
On the other hand, to "settle" the Turkish problem and, at the same time, to enlarge and accentuate the Indian problem is infallibly to destroy even the temporary settlement of the Turkish problem.

***
It is unfortunate that the views on World Affairs contributed to these columns during 1921 were so obscurely expressed as to remain for the most part unintelligible, since they contained the only genuine attempt that has been made to see world-policy as a whole. For the want of such a Light of the World, the world is stumbling in darkness at this moment, and any day or week may find us headlong over a precipice. In particular the immediate problem is one of racial consciousness; and if we define it as the struggle of the East against the West, or, even more explicitly, as the struggle of the coloured races against the white, the relation it bears to the most general problem of the world to-day, namely, that of ill-distributed power against concentrated power, should be apparent. Our propaganda in favour of consumer-credit against the present monopoly of producer-credit is, in fact, the economic analogue and perhaps basis of the corresponding propaganda of racial, national and individual liberty against their respective monopolies of dictatorship and power. From this point of view significance attaches to events as far apart as the current discussion of Australian immigration, the war on, the Rand, the Engineering Lock-out, and a speech by Senator Ladd in the American Senate. These and a thousand and one similar events are all linked together like the waves of a common tide. Consider, €or example, the first-named of these current events.
Australia has an area 24 times the size of the United Kingdom and a total population less than that of London alone. At the same time, her immigration laws and provisions are of such a character that practically only the most highly favoured of individuals from the rest of the world can find a domicile in her tremendous waste spaces, Her Northern Territory, four times the size of the United Kingdom, and situated in a tropical belt that has never vet been developed by white labour, has actually a smaller population to-clay than it had 30 years ago, the present population of that vast area being only 3,800, or less than the population of an English provincial market town.
Yet Mr. Hughes and his fellowcountrymen (if they will allow us to call them such without offence) continue to declare in favour of a "white man's land" under the pretence that they are keeping Australia "clean and sweet for their descendants and kinsmen. " Such dog-in-the-mangerism has, however, other implications than Mr. Hughes' dubious sentimentality.
The selfish exclusiveness of Australia is, in the first instance, an economic policy, and reflects exactly the stupid narrow-mindedness of a Labour Government obsessed by obsolete Trade Union ideas. Australia is governed by the mentality of tenth-rate Trade Union officials.
And, in the second instance only, the policy is racial, for, as Mr. Barwell clearly shows, the prejudice that closes Northern Australia to the only peoples who can effectively occupy it is based on opinions that would have made the British Empire itself impossible. *** Senator Ladd's address to the Monetary Conference held at Washington last December has been advertised all over the world. It is a distinct echo of the Douglas proposals with which our readers are familiar and may. in fact, be regarded as their loudest repercussion in the American world of practical politics.
Senator Ladd proposes to communaiise the control of the issue of credit and to place all money (not legal tender only) within the creation and jurisdiction of the national authority.
So far so good; and, needless to say, we have every sympathy with this attempt to break the present virtual monopoly of money and credit exercised, as Senator Ladd says, by "the privileged few. " Unfortunately, as everywhere else, the Scheme adapted from the Douglas proposals for the bettermen t of America seizes those proposals by one horn only. There are two essential parts in the Douglas Scheme-creditcontrol and price-regulation-and of these it has hitherto been the invariable rule that only the first should be considered in any attempt to put the Scheme into operation.
Senator Ladd's attempt falls under the same criticism.
He proposes to control credit and to issue it freely to bona-fide producers, quite oblivious of the fact that every issue of credit, even for production, reduces the effective purchasing-power of the prospective consumer.
By diluting the existing purchasing power, every issue of credit, unless simultaneously accompanied by a reduction of prices, simply has the effect of increasing production while diminishing consumption. The actual problem of to-day, in short, is only intensified by a partial application of the Douglas ideas. Communal credit-control without communal priceregulation is fatal.
America has definitely refused to take part in the Genoa Conference. Though the refusal is conveyed in the cryptically allusive style beloved of diplomats, its true inwardness is not difficult to seize through the lattice-work.
Broadly, America's complaint is that it is a political rather than an economic conference, and that it does not mean business in the American sense of the word. Readers will not need reminding, however, that the two classes of questions cannot be separated in the clear-cut way assumed in the Note. Indeed, the Note is obviously self-contradictory on this head.
What are the questions "without the satisfactory determination of which the chief causes of economic disturbance must continue to operate," which Washington complains "have been excluded from consideration"?
As is well known from semi-official pronouncements, they concern the German indemnities and the enormous land armaments maintained by certain nations, which render impossible the balancing of budgets. But what issues could be more "political" than these? On the other hand, the question of Russian recognition, which America would wish to see excluded, has economic bearings, not less direct than those of indemnities and armaments.
The real fact is that America is as political in her interests as the European Allies, but it happens that her particular fancy in political issues is different from that of Europe. It is the strange obsession from which she suffers in regard to the Soviet Government. In the name of common sense, what possible steps can be taken "towards the restoration of economic conditions which will permit Russia to regain her productive power," except on the basis of the recognition of her de facto Government? The Note only spreads a cloud of words over the issue and does not hint at any intelligible policy of a positive kind.
But the real moral of the whole incident lies! far deeper. America's pose of standing for some particularly fundamental economic reconstruction is hollow. She actually takes her stand on precisely the same platform of financial orthodoxy as the European Powers.
Until the assumptions of this system are challenged at their very roots, there can be no such reconstruction of Europe as we ha-\-e been appealing for.
We understand that the Federation of British Industries is organising through the agency of local chambers of commerce meetings up and down the country with a view to rousing general interest in the question of ''Economy." The intention is to expound the underlying economic issues, as understood by the F.B.I. "Economics for All," in short, is the watchword of the movement. The Federation has apparently not thought it necessary to go into retreat first, with a view to learning-a little economics itself before undertaking to instruct a benighted public. We have had occasion, in commenting on various of its pronouncements, to expose its own nakedness in this respect. The "Times" has had some unusually naive comments on the project, apparently inspired from F.B.I. sources. It declares that the wage-earners' interest in the remission of their employers' taxation ' 'is not generally recognised by the workers, who forget that in the economic world burdens of any kind are almost invariably passed on.'' That is a favourite theme of revolutionary Socialists ; and it is surely provoking Providence for the "business community'' to give publicity to this particular issue. They have, however, curious methods of commending their system to the wage-earner. They have just been impressing on him that they can guarantee him no standard of life whatever; he must be content to take whatever pittance the "economic necessities" of competition in the world-market will allow them to dole out to him. And now they assure him further that they can and will "pass on'' to him the cost of *** *** any ameliorations which he may induce the State to secure to him and his children. The natural moral for him would seem to be that a system which necessitates such intolerable wrongs must be "overthrown" at all hazards, even though his method of overthrowing it is likely to be an unpleasant one for everyone, including himself. The only way of safety would seem to lie in, not piling "burdens" on the sections now ascendent, but in releasing our abundant stores of potential wealth to flow out in fair measure to the ordinary individual.
The Die-Hards, whom the Lord Chancellor has just been cornmending as "the salt" of the Unionist Party, have been manifesting.
So now we know what the only genuine Conservatism is. Most of its affirmations sound drowsily plausible-till we start to remember that "the bearings of this observation lie in the application of it." Thus what would be more sweetly reasonable than, "No section of the community should be suffered to threaten or molest any other"? Have the Die-Hards been strenuously remonstrating with the engineering employers for their attack on the A.E.U.; or do threats and molestation only fall within the meanings of the Manifesto when: they are directed from below upwards ?
Again, "happiness and prosperity are to be sought . . . in securing to every man the unfettered enjoyment of the fruits of his labour and thrift. " Yes, but whether our present arrangements do secure this to (let us say) the average docker, is a question apt to be answered differently, according as one lives in East Ham or in Mayfair. Of course, the Manifesto insists strongly on "strict economy, " and again it splits on this same rock of high-sounding ambiguity. "Avoid all expenditure which is not proved to be absolutely necessary" ; necessary, €or what? Just to keep the nation in some sort of way existing? Or may we interpret "necessity" by Aristotle's standard of the "good life" as distinct from mere life? If the latter, every one will put the limit of "necessity" in a different place. "Hasty and grandiose schemes," the document continues," of so-called reconstruction . . . are impossible under present conditions. " As we have continually pointed out, reconstruction on a magnifical scale we can easily afford.
And however tempting it may now be to seek to discredit it as "hasty and grandiose," it was most definitely promised (with the full connivance of those who are now Die-Hards) to the working-class as an inducement to their hearty co-operation in the war. Here again the manifestants express the soundest sentiments, but evidently intend to reserve complete liberty in their choice of cases in which to give them practical expression. "We recognise that the necessity for keeping public faith involves adherence to obligations to which that faith is pledged, even although those obligations were unwisely entered into." But of course over such signatures as Carson, Northumberland, Sydenham, and Frederick Banbury the benefits of this recognition may be assumed to be strictly limited to bondholders.
The public should not refuse to take seriously the plans being laid by the Communists for making capital out of the present engineering dispute. There is no doubt that they wiIl do their best to extend the area of the crisis, and to that end will try to bring the unemployed into the struggle.
And, however much to seek may be their constructive policy, they are, as we have often pointed out, masters of the art of negative propaganda.
Moreover, the situation is exceedingly tense, and serious outbreaks might easily be provoked in such centres as Glasgow. We note that the Communists compare the present crisis with "Black Friday" and declare there must not be a failure this time. As to what would actually have been the sequel, if the contemplated general strike had occurred on that occasion, there may well be differences of opinion; but there can be no doubt that those who were most anxious for it imagined its prospects to be revolutionary. It *** *** is an ominous sign that its memories are being recalled by Communists. Our governing and possessing classes had better be careful, though real "care" in such a connection means anything rather than repression. Repression, in fact, would be a policy of madness. We have repeatedly pointed out that the Communist virus could be drained out in no time if a constructive social policy, worthy of the name, were authoritatively adopted.
The Situation in India.

By Marmaduke Plckthall.
V.-THE RESULT OF " REPRESSION." WHEN the Non-Co-operation movement started there was no ill-feeling towards the personnel of Government in India with the exception of the men responsible for the Punjab atrocities. The Government of Englandfor its broken pledges on the Turkish question-rather than the Government of India, was regarded as the enemy. The epithet, "satanic," as applied to Government by Gandhi, referred to the negation of theocracy; and a more sincere and evident espousal of the grievances of India by the Government of India-affronted no less than the Indian people by the terms of the Sevres Treaty-would have sufficed to free the latter from it at that time, and for months afterwards; indeed until "repression" began. One may admit that the Government showed patience (from the point of view of Governments) in circumstances' very trying to officials accustomed to deny the people's right to criticise, and constitutionally unable to perceive the truth that organised agitation is the sole alternative to violence where popular excitement has reached fever heat. But patience was undoubtedly the best policy, the only one which made for peace; and while it was maintained the agitation was quite peaceful. Only after special repressive laws had begun to be used here and there by a provincial governor or district magistrate, whose irritation at the "impudence" had got past bearing, did breaches of the law occur or any bitter feeling become evident.
The last straw to the patience of a large section of the bureaucracy seems to have been the boycott of the Duke of Connaught's' visit. This was considered as a piece of rank disloyalty by men who altogether fail to realise the intense belief and trust in English Royalty which had prevailed among the Indian people until then, and the very loyal indignation of the latter at seeing a member of the Royal Family, the Icing-Emperor's representative, led in triumph by political -opponents of the aspirations of the great majority of Indian subjects of His Majesty.
Amid the crash of old beliefs in England's goodness, the Royal House alone retained prestige.
It seems indeed a pity, from the English point of view, which differs, or should differ, widely from the Anglo-Indian, that the Royal House be identified, with any policy in India, particularly with one which the majority of Indians think pitifully inadequate -that an Indian should replace an Englishman in this or that position, that more Indians should be admitted to a share of government : that is the gist of the Montagu-Chelmsford "Reforms. " They appeal only to a small circle of place-hunters, and do not touch the nation's burning grievances at all. If these could be redressed and India-Government and people-brought at once to man's estate within the Empire, I do not think there would be any furious public outcry for Indian individuals to replace English individuals in Government appointments. That a Royal personage should have been used like an idol by the bureaucracy to give unmerited importance to the "Reforms," and festivities organised to give the world the false impression that India was delighted with them, annoyed the Non-Co-operators.
Hence the boycott. The loss of temper on the part of the bureaucracy, which was evident after the Duke of Connaught's visit, and the wholesale "repression" which will make the visit of the Prince of Wales for ever memorable, have not reduced the spirit of the Non-Co-operators nor impaired the boycott, but have seriously impaired the prestige of the Crown in India; which seems to be a great Imperial disaster. Directly after the departure of H.H. the Duke of Connaught, the Non-Co-operators began to be harassed and their activities restricted arbitrarily in some provinces-particularly the United Provinces (colloquially called U.P.), Behar and Orissa, and some districts of Madras, "the backward Presidency." It is instructive to note, as showing the effect of a repressive policy on the "repressed," that it was the U.P. contingent at the Ahmedabad congress who wanted an independent Indian republic proclaimed immediately. The reader must know that every District Magistrate --Let alone provincial governor-in India has power to ('proclaim" a movement in his district and proceed against it after proclamation with the "utmost rigour of the law"-that is to say, activities, which were perfectly legal yesterday may be illegal to-day and a movement which is constitutional in one village be "seditious" in the next, without reason given, other than the will and pleasure of the local despot. He must also know that high officials generally depend for their information upon sources poisoned against Non-Co-operators.
There is happily no parallel in England to the power wielded by the subordinate Indian police over the honour, the good name, the liberty, the very life, of Indians.
It is not, therefore, wonderful that governors and District Magistrates, who have ordained " repression"-i.e., given the police a free hand against the Non-Co-operators in their jurisdiction-for months past, should now deny the statement of Mahatma Gandhi that atrocities have been committed, and declare that they have done no more than to uphold the law. Before I left India last September the Non-Coperators had derived the impression that a large section of the bureaucracy resented the peaceful selfsufficing nature of the movement which eluded them, and were deliberately trying to provoke a rising of the ignorant hangers-on which would bring it within their clutches.
I have already mentioned the wide gulf existing between the English and the Indians in India, and that I was on the Indian side of the gulf. In that position, I must say that I derived the same impression as the Non-Co-operators. But that the Indian subordinate police rather than the English rulers may have been responsible for that impression I now incline to believe, because on the singularly few occasions when the ignorant "fringe" of the Non-Co-operation movement has been roused to violence, the object of attack has been the local police-station.
Even in ordinary times, I have often heard Indians complain, police evidence is too readily accepted in the courts; and an ex-judge of the High Court of Bombay admitted in my hearing that Indian judges were all "out for convictions." Where even, the most enlightened and humane of governors feels bound by esprit de corps to stand by his officials at the moment of a crying scandal and let injustice for the moment take its course, however much he may destroy the said officials afterwards, it may be guessed how little, in extraordinary times like these, and in the case of Non-Co-operators who will not defend themselves, justice in India can have merited the epithet "British" which Lord Reading had the curious fancy to apply to it.
We, in the Bombay Presidency, were fortunate in having a governor of wide Oriental experience outside India, strong enough to maintain, amid the prejudices and the fears of Anglo-India, the proper standpoint of the Englishman in face of a great popular progressive movement.
Except in Sind, which is a separate administration, there was no "repression, " consequently no disorder. The movement was constructive and developed usefully. Its agitation was conducted, as we should say in England, constitutionally.
The police restricted their activities, to keeping order in the English way. The Government, although denounced, was not detested, and the governor was personally popular-until the arrest of Shaukat Ali and Mohamed Ali and five others, which, rumour said, was forced upon the Bombay Government by the Government of India.
Upon the whole I should quote the policy of the Bombay Government during my year in India as the right way of treating Non-Co-operation pending the redress of India's grievances from the point of view of any Government of which the aim is peaceable development, and the policy of the U.P. Government as the wrong way ; judging not from my own predilections, but by actual results.
The trial of the Ali Brothers, with the various feelings it aroused, opened a new phase of the Non-Cooperation movement. Seven religious leaders of the Indian people (one is inevitably reminded of the Seven Bishops) were brought to trial "in respect of their moving, supporting and passing," at the All-India Khilafat Conference at Karachi in June, 1921, the following resolution : This meeting of the All-Indian Khilafat Conference heartily congratulates Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Angora Government upon their magnificent victories and the success of their most desperate (or self-sacrificing) endeavours in upholding the laws of Islam and this meeting prays to Almighty God that they may soon succeed in expelling the whole of the armies of foreign Governments from every nook and corner of the Turkish Empire. In addition, this meeting clearly proclaims that it is in every way religiously unlawful for a Mussulman at the present moment to continue in the army or to enter the army or to induce others tu join the army, and it is the duty of all the Mussulmans in general and the Ulema in particular to see that these religious commandments are brought home to every Mussulman in the army. Furthermore, this meeting also announces that if the British Government were to take any military measures against the Angora Government directly or indirectly, openly or secretly, then the Mussulmans of India will be compelled to commence breaking laws, i.e., civil disobedience, with concurrence of the Congress, and to proclaim in the forthcoming annual Session of the Congress to be held at Ahmedabad the complete independence of India and the establishment of Republic Government in India. In view of the extraordinarily frank nature of the above resolution, which suggests the throwing of all cards on the table, it is a constant source of amazement to me that the Government should have charged the men responsible for "moving, supporting and passing" it with conspiracy ! The word, in ordinary unofficial parlance, surely implies some measure of deceit or secrecy! In the conduct of these men there had been nothing of the kind.
Nowhere has the fallacy of the Criminal Investigation Department's diagnosis been more clearly shown than in everything connected with that trial at Karachi. Here were men whose zeal for righteousness undoubtedly exceeded their hostility to Government, men who were Mahatmi Gandhi's staunch supporters, therefore honestly opposed to any policy of violence, men pledged not to resist the law, men who would have answered to an ordinary summons, treated as the heads of a dangerous conspiracy which might break out at any minute in rebellion. Before the hall where they were being tried there were barbed wire entanglements, troops and machine-guns; and all their comings and goings were made the occasion for a display of military strength, which actually served to show all India the absurd delusion under which the Government was labouring as to the nature of those men's activities and the character of the movement which they served. The resolution above quoted is unquestionably of a nature to make any ordinary Government (so to speak) sit up." Nevertheless I am sure that the arrest and prosecution-still more the sentence-of those leaders It was as open as the day.
" was a terrible mistake in policy. For they were not conspirators, but honest spokesmen of their people's feeling.
The part of the resolution which relates to Muslims serving in the army is merely a statement of the undoubted law of Islam in given circumstances: it had already been made by a great council of the Ulema, and has since, been solemnly endorsed in mosques all over India; and the part referring to an Indian republic is conditional upon a course of events which the Government of India no less than the movers of the resolution was (ostensibly) trying to prevent. The terms of the resolution were known to comparatively few people till the trial published them throughout the country. The trial became, as it was bound to become, in the opinion of the great majority of Indians, a question of God's law against man's law; and, far from tending to the separation of Hindus from Muslims, tended to their closer union on the basis of theocracy.
It shook, as it was bound to shake, the public faith in the sincerity of the Government's professed support of Muslim views upon the Turkish question; and it bore a colour of religious persecution in the eyes of Indians which was increased by the harsh sentence upon men who, in the general opinion of their countrymen, had done but their religious duty. All the accused had to be acquitted on the main charge of conspiracy; which is official proof, if proof were needed, that the diagnosis of the Non-Co-operation movement offered by the C.I.D.-and still, it seems, accepted in high places-is all wrong. But six of them-all the Muslims-were condemned, on minor charges, to two years' rigorous imprisonment (anglice penal servitude). Rigorous imprisonment for purely political or, as one might say, intellectual offences has been given freely in the case of Non-Cooperators during the last year. That it is regarded as outrageous by the Indian public may be judged from the fact that every sentence of the kind has brought immense accessions to the Non-Co-operators' ranks, and even produced some resignations of Indian members of the police force.
The immediate effect of the Karachi prosecutions on the situation in India was to deprive the more turbulent Muslim elements of the chief restraining influence, at the same time giving them a sense of added grievance, for the accused were universally beloved. Had Shaukat Ali been at large there would have been no riots, against Parsees and Eurasians (co-operators) in the Indian quarters of Bombay on the day the Prince of Wales landed.
Indeed, it is astonishing that after those arrests, considering the angry feeling in the country, the visit of the Prince of Wales was not postponed out of respect for royalty. The Congress and Khilafat volunteers were a well-behaved and very useful unarmed corps for keeping order in assemblages of Non-Co-operators.
They were chosen always from the lawabiding class, with strict inquiry as to individual character.
Several of these unarmed lads were killed, in the aforesaid riots in Bombay, in their really heroic efforts to restrain the angry crowd. One day their organisation was "proclaimed" and wholesale arrests were made.
With what result? All sorts and conditions rushed to enlist as volunteers, and afterwards in one or two districts (of U.P. and Behar, where "repression" has been harshest) the Government has been able to point to murderous attacks by volunteers on the local police (too zealous agents of "repression"). Every case of "salutary repression" (from the point of view of Government) has been an act of quite uncalledfor "provocation" (from the point of view of Indians) and has tended manifestly to increase the vigour and determination of the movement. That very wide divergence of the points of view is sufficient in itself to show that there is something radically wrong to-day in India, which "repression' ' without understanding must continue to make worse.

Credit and Society.
THE Guild Idea has been called the Old Testament of that revelation of Economic Democracy which THE NEW AGE has bequeathed to society.
It is a happy analogy, since just as Christians find the central meaning of their Old Testament fulfilled and illuminated by the New, so may we who are guildsmen find in the gospel of Social Credit the clue for which we have been waiting. And a clue not only to what a real economic democracy involves, but to the means of its attainment.
Once men's minds are awake to the factor of Credit-Power, the goal of Democracy will be within their grasp. Then-and then only-can the guild be founded, not as an isolated and limited experiment, but as the characteristic feature of the whole social structure.
Let us open once again our "old testament,'' and we shall find as we turn its pages a challenge: both to the capitalist and to the collectivist.
We shall find a denial that man's service to the community could justly be hired in a labour market at a wage; a denial that his industrial life ought to be regulated by an authority not responsible ultimately to himself and to his fellows; a denial that society can be saved, or the worker set free, by the initiative in industrial affairs being transferred to the State.
Not only does the guildsman deny these things : he affirms their opposite. The wage-system must be abolished ; self-government in industry established ; State sovereignty modified rather than enlarged : to the extent to which these objects are achieved or hastened will he count social change to be bringing men nearer a just and free society. All this, then, the guildsman steadfastly believes ; but he has commonly been expected to believe something further.
He has been required to anticipate-and the demand is not without some degree of canonical authority-that the full attainment of his objects is somehow bound up with "the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. " The guildsman was to establish his orthodoxy only when he consented to call himself a "Guild Socialist." As well ask "What is Truth?" as "What is Socialism?" for one would assuredly stay no longer for one's answer.
The regulation of credit-issue and price-fixing in accordance with communal principles generally recognised and firmly established may or may not be deemed to be "Socialism" by the experts in such classifications.
What is certain is that they do not involve that huge surrender of discretion to the civil officers of the community which Socialists of even school have been forced-voluntarily or otherwise-to contemplate.
Financial control of society-the ultimate source of every other illegitimate form of control-is not thereby transferred from plutocracy to bureaucracy: it is rendered automatic. Moreover, far from narrowing the sphere in which the opportunities of property are experienced and enjoyed, they offer the chance of enormously widening it. Were not the title far too esoteric to have any general significance, I should invite THE NEW AGE reader who accepted the inspiration of both its old and new testaments to call himself not a Guild Socialist but a "guild distributivist. " Though Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton, might equally refuse him entrance to their narrow fold, he would have the best of claims to shelter there. For only by the universalising of the dividend can Distributivism pass from an academic aspiration into a social reality.
Of the distributivist element in the Social Credit programme, however, I have written already in these notes; I am now concerned with the relation of that programme to the guild idea. As a devout student of -and in a very minor degree contributor to-the "old testament," I am eager to establish its dependence upon the new--and, I will confess, so far as my main In what did our "guild idea" consist? interest in the matter is concerned, of the new upon it So far from the readiness of the guild propagandist to fit himself into the Socialist uniform having been an assistance to the realisation of his fundamental objects, it is Precisely his irrelevant determination to march towards a Socialist goal which hampers, the guild experiments he seeks to make upon the way. His infant guilds faint and are like to perish for want of a breath of credit ; whilst without any sword to slay the dragons of finance, he is under the necessity of exposing his fragile offspring to the depredations of plutocracy. Over the largest and most vital sections of the industrial field common prudence forces him to exercise the most rigid "birth-control." Yet it is not for lack of sympathy with guild objects among the workers that no mining or railway or engineering guilds can be born. Blind adherence to the Socialist formulae on to which he has tacked his guild ideas leaves the propagandist of "Guild Socialism" helpless to satisfy the aspirations he has himself so largely contributed to create.
Because he knows no means of employing labour monopoly for creative purposes, the workers are bidden to wait for their deliverence till the day of Nationalisation dawns-that day which is always the day after to-morrow.
The truth is that so long as the Guild Socialist seeks deliverance on strictly Socialist lines, the guild, so far as the main industries of the country are concerned, will remain an "idea." It is a thousand pities that the guild appeal should fall thus upon men whose ears are nom indeed open to receive it, but whose hands are bound.
Yet bound they will remain while so many other hypotheses of plutocracy remain "permanent" for guild advocates who have learnt only the need to repudiate one. A thousand pities : for the guild appeal to the worker is essentially the right appeal to him as such. The organisation of production in a free and stable society can rest upon no other basis. But the worker in the great industries, confronted by a monopoly of plant in capitalist hands, cannot begin to free himself as a worker unless he sets about at the same time to free himself as a citizen. By this is not meant mere resort to "political action ; we can appreciate now more fully than ever that "economic power precedes and dominates political power. " What is meant is that the worker must seek the transformation of his industrial and political status through the actualisation of his real economic power, the credit dormant in his "blackleg-proof" oganisations. In such an effortunlike the efforts of the "class-war"-he calls into being a new power which threatens no interest save those of financial privilege. Here indeed is the true Direct Action, which creates not the proletarian dictator, but the "active citizen." Guildsmen of every school have insisted that guild principles will alone harmonise the service of society with the freedom of the individual. The principle of Function has been hailed as the key to both, and a social framework of singular complexity constructed thereon has been advocated as a means of "diffusing" political and industrial power. Along such lines has Guild Socialism been "restated"; but it will need to be restated once again if the most fundamental diffusion of all is to he achieved. What of financial power? Is any diffusion of financial power really compatible with " social control" ? I cannot see how any such diffusion is going to be attained unless the labour-monopoly of our potential guilds is employed to attain it by the universalising of the dividend. That way alone lies the freedom of the guildsman and the stability of the guild. Industrial freedom follows gradually, but all the more securely for that reason, from the encroaching economic control of the Labour Bank. It is certain that no achievements in the direction of workers' control can be more than transitory if won by purely industrial means, as the collapse of all such tentative advances, in this direction in the face of the present slump is now demonstrating. The Old Testament can only find fulfilment through the New, and in seeking the economic democracy of creditcontrol the guildsman will find industrial democracy added unto him.

Our Generation
A SPEECH which Mr. George Harvey, the American Ambassador, made to the Plymouth Chamber of Commerce the other week IS worth noticing.
It was not remarkable for its originality of thought, but it was remarkable in so far as it moved on the level of thought. Mr. Harvey, a political figure speaking before a commercial assembly, and, before we forget to mention it, in England, actually ventured to acknowledge thought as a thing of some validity and importance, evidently without any inkling that he was acting in an extraordinary or absurd manner.
" Strife must continue forever between the mighty apposing forces for good and evil," he declared to these Plymouth Brethren who seek a paradise in this life, in this hell. To some men this notion is a platitude, a platitude which they would not be without ; but what on earth could it have meant in the Chamber of Commerce? What would it mean, indeed, on any political platform in England, where the extreme hazard of the intellect seems to be to discover how much can be wrung from Germany, whose children, as it is, are being regularly and of necessity underfed, and how much can be economised on our own children, and on the unhappy people who cram them with the dead nonsense which ne call education?
What would it mean, finally, at those Socialist meetings where the vision of a Utopia has at last disappeared from the very perorations, and the echo of Mr. Clynes' voice is heard with more and more drowsy insistence?
Mr. Lloyd George, we know, made a corner in Utopias some years ago; but that is no reason why Mr. Clynes should be so dull, and why all the Progressives should make shadows of disgust come to our faces by their pictures of progress. The fact seems to be that all the parties alike are unable to think in any other terms than that two and two make four; and even that seems occasionally to be tool great an effort for them.
In political thought, even where it is "idealistic," we mean among the Socialists, the idea of humanity has for the last few years been lost : We know the retort which will immediately be made to this accusation; that men of affairs have something else to think of, that things are too bad and calamity too near for people to trouble themselves with such fascinating and useless conceptions as humanity. But the truth is that we are too far gone now to do without the useless conception of humanity If we do not acknowledge humanity, implicitly or explicitly, then what are we working for? In the name of what arc all the reformers and counter-reformers running here and there and back on the earth? Devices, expedients, reforms, without an idea, without a goal; that is all we can show to the gods and to ourselves in this year of disgrace, 1922. To work on and on, putting a patch here and a patch there on the rotten hull of our financial vessel, and generally where it is not needed, without knowledge and without common agreement, and with no inkling what the ship is intended for and where it is going to sail : that is precisely to he in a state of uncivilisation without knowing it. " That in the end victory would be achieved and complete dominance be acquired by the right, we could believe ; hut even so, in the meantime clearly only works could justify Faith.
There is work to be done ! It behoved us, then, in this changed and changing area, to look well to our weapons." So said Mr. Harvey, and his sentiments, true as they are, take us immediately above the level of political thought in England to-day.
A conception of the drama of man is absolutely necessary to us now as never before; for vitality itself, the capacity to work and to think, not with mediocrity, but greatly, is the only thing which can save us. And great ideas are the releasers arid generators of energy. To work without an idea is a species of involuntary sabotage.
Well, the parties of ideas themselves have lost their ideas. Renan said that metaphysical speculation was good, because while the problems it was concerned with were perhaps insoluble, human dignity demanded that we should be concerned with them. It is not God, however, that we have forgotten so diastrously in these years ; it is man. We have forgotten ourselves.
Even a recrudescence of sentimental Liberalism would he better than the present state of things, for it would show at least that men's minds were turned, however blindly, to something greater than of economy.
A recent Industrial Fatigue Research report, issued by the Stationary Office, states the interesting fact that Essex boys are superior physically to Manchester boys. Dr. Ritchie, Medical Officer of Health to the Education Department, has since made a professional analysis of this diagnosis, reported by the Press. He holds that the fast that " the Essex youth is approximately two and a third inches taller, ten pounds heavier, and has a hand-grip of four and a third kilograms stronger than the Manchester youth" is no proof that the one is physically superior to the other. The Essex boy is only bigger, heavier and stronger : that is all. The doctor asks city people to console themselves with two reflections : " (I) Bulk is no criterion of fitness; (2) Statistics relating to size, weight and strength, unless interpreted by people competent to judge their relative meaning and value [who are they?], may lead to quite fallacious deductions. " These two reflections, we should say, are cryptic enough to satisfy any city population. Dr. Ritchie goes on : " Of course, a city youth is usually smaller than the countryside-product, but the test comes when both of them are fully trained to a standard of fitness-not while they follow their ordinary daily calling." We are getting on to such physically metaphysical levels here that we do not know whether we seize exactly the meaning of the doctor. He seems to us to desire to take away from the town boy everything which makes him a town boy, and from the "country-product '' everything which makes him a country-product," and then, in some scientific no-man's-land, to give them both a sporting chance, providing he can discover which is which, to show who is the better.
That does not quite convince us. It is surely in the following of "their ordinary daily calling," in the process of their existence in Essex and Manchester, that the one becomes a country lad and the other a town boy;, and the size, weight and strength which they acquire in that way they must do the best they can with during the remainder of their lives. A more interesting reflection than Dr. Ritchie's two is contained in a note in the report : " There is no reliable knowledge concerning 'race' differences, though it is to be expected that Essex contains a much larger pro portion of persons of Anglo-Saxon origin than Lancashire." If that is so, the question may be a question between two races, and the author of " The Passing of the Great Race " may be right in his contention that the industrialisation of England has €or decades been substituting the quick small, adaptable Mediterannean race for the tall, blue-eyed, seafaring and countryloving Nordic people. All the greatest and most fateful changes in societies and peoples arc perhaps imperceptible.
The New Therapy, By Ezra Pound.

DR. LOUIS BERMAN in "The Glands Regulating
Personality" offers us a comforting relief from Freudian excess; and at the same time one of the most interesting works on physiology that has been given to a lay public since Gourmont's "Physique de l'Amour" He holds quite sensibly that the limit of whatever is sound in the Freudian psychology is fixed by Freud's working in a vacuum. You have all this talk of suppressed wishes, but no analysis of the charged wish itself.
The present belief is that the body has slowly developed about the endocrine glands; the pineal, pituitary, thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, adrenals, pancreas, and the gonads; that these are older than the brain (cerebrum), and that they control the unconscious, or that they are the subconscious; that when the secretions of these glands interact in certain ways, they produce definite chemical pressure, and that when this pressure reaches a certain intensity it forces itself on the consciousness. All this is upheld by experiment. The Freudians, according to Berman, try continually to relieve complexes by psychological means before considering whether chemical means would not be simpler.
The whole structure and temperament of the body is determined by these ductless glands, now called endocrines. Within the last twenty or thirty years experiment has discovered many of their functions, and determined some of their secretions. The present state of knowledge is tabulated on pp. 94-95 of Dr. Berman's book, as follows :

I. Thyroid
Thyroxin Energy production

SECRETION. FUNCTION.
Controller of growth of specialised organs and tissues-brain and sex. Insuline Sugar-Metabolism. Dr. Berman's 290 pages are barely enough to cover details, which I can certainly not attempt in this note. Suffice it that "everyone" knows that thyroid has been increasingly used in medicine, for stimulation, for cure of cretinism, etc. Given the different actions of these glands, Berman and the other members of the society for research into Glands of Internal Secretion have been able to divide long-suffering humanity into a new set of types (interest for all dilletante palmists, astrologers, character-readers, etc.). Napoleon, Darwin, the inevitable Oscar, reappear diagnosed, glandula, tenulla, vagula ; Dr. Berman after a Voltairian survey of human misery and muddle looks forward to a new, but moderately distant, era, and expresses himself with a somewhat Oriental wealth of metaphor; the main drift of his book being, let us say, quite sensible, and a certain amount of optimism having its uses.
There is as yet no way to tame the tiger by excision of adrenal cortex ; pineal personalities will continue to oppose pituitary personalities, and to be distantly bored with adrenals, etc. At the same time, the book marks presumably one of the great revolutions in medicine; a revolution as great as that caused by Pasteur.
A whole new field of research is opened; five hundred specialists are at work; the general tendency is to recognise that human beings can differ widely from each other without being abnormal; and a strong scientific support of this "humanity" can only make for civilisation, tolerance, and an end of Fabian and Puritan endeavours to cram all human being into one button-mould.
Given an active pituitary, in a constricted sellaturcica (bone-cavity' at base of brain) certain inconveniences follow. Given imperfect balance of glands or over-or under-activity, character must take certain trends, remediable or other. The scope of this difference is demonstrated in the definite results obtained in normalising of cretins. Berman uses the term "chemistry of the soul," and one may accept it or qualify it; certainly he has demonstrated the impossibility of an independent or separate soul-entity manifesting itself through a body in which the thyroid supply falls below a certain minimum.
I am not attempting a review of his book, the matter, as I have said, being too complicated to be dealt with in a' single brief note. I do, however, wish to offer certain further speculations made from Berman's data, but not indulged in, as speculations, by him.
In an article which appeared in the "Mercure de France" of last September 15, and which now forms a postscript to my translation of Gourmont's "Physique de l'Amour,'' I postulated a double secretion of the gonads, or at least spoke of them as a sieve. I made various statements now antiquated, and indulged in some speculations as yet neither supported nor disproved. I called attention to the similarity of spermatozoides and ovules and brain cells in their capacity to contain or project a form.
That is to say, the spermatozoide compels the ovule to evolve along certain predetermined lines ; the ovule receives the pattern and evolves. The brain-cell holds also an image; a generalisation may be considered as a superposition of such images. The evolution of the cerebrum may have been caused by a sort of alluvial deposit of spermatozoides or of secondary gonad secretion about the primitive ganglia, or about the original glands. Berman announces the difference between male and female to be chiefly that the male treatment of lime salts is relatively uniform, the female treatment a flux. Putting together my earlier speculations and Berman's data, I offer, with a layman's deference, the following conjectures for filling some of the lacunae in his table.
The pineal gland, as he says, contains two things, cells filled with a pigment like that in the eye's retina, and little piles of lime salt crystals (which resist the action of X-rays). I suggest that the pineal is not an extinct-eye, that Descartes had some ground for his belief in its being the seat of some activity almost important enough to be called "the soul." In tabular form : Pineal : gland of "lucidity," of the sense of light analogous to the eye, perhaps as the fibres of Corti in the ear show analogy to stringed instrument. gland of metamorphosis, of original thought, the secretion being very probably just the lime salts crystals well known to lie in it, but they may be secreted not as a slow effusion, but ejected suddenly into sensitised area, analogy to the tests. This causes the new juxtaposition of images. distinct from imitative thought.

The original thought, as
Light, or the sensation of light, may well he the combustion or encounter of this retina-pigment either, as in the eye, with exterior vibrations, or in the pineal with the emanation of brain cells, or even with the cells themselves.
Berman postulates the posterior pituitary as the gland of hallucination.
I want to distinguish between the orderly visualisation which I presume to be pineal, but which neither confuses nor annoys the visionary, and D.Ts., or any other sort of hallucination.
It is possible that the activity of the pineal may be limited to controlling the post-pituitary phantasma. It is possible that the ejection, of lime salt particles in a female would tend to give her merely an even temperament, not making her masculoid, as does excess of adrenals, but freeing her from the general confusions of her sex. The original thought in male would be caused by the discharge of the lime salt into static sensitised area, giving him a maternity in thought, without the homosexual tendencies caused by overbalance in some of the glandular secretions. Contrast of Pineal with Pituitary : very possibly that the Pineal represents1 intelligence developed from sight ; the pituitary, intelligence from smell, the keenscent, hot on the trail type. In attributing the Pineal to adolescence, Berman may take an effect for a cause. The Pineal does usually decline after adolescence, but so also does the faculty for physical growth, and the general adaptability of the animal. Summarising again : Pineal : secretion ? retinal pigment lime salt in crystal form. function : sense of vision, sense of light flowing along the nerves and making one aware where one's hands are in the dark. luminosity in vision, "gates of beryl and chrysoprase" effect, power of visualisation as distinct from hallucination. Intelligence developed from seeing, telescopic as opposed to telepathic intelligence. Pituitary : intelligence developed from smell.
Another possibility the experimenters do not seem to have taken into account is that of glandular secretion as odour. Judging from general activity of specialised cells in the body, many of them must be gifted with a sense of smell, or "something analogous," i.e., the same thing with a different and longer name attached.

Galahad Green.
SCENE : A room in JULIET'S Flat. Back centre, a fire.
To its right, a chair; to its left, an easy chair and a small IT is obvious that different social conditions produce different art. I need not refer to the past in order to show this process; it is sufficient to look at our time.
It cannot be accidental that Cubism appears just when the whole of social life depends on machinery.
It cannot be accidental that Futurists appeared, with their outcry "La guerra e unico hygiena del mondo," just when the atmosphere was electrified with ever accumulating signs of the approach of a big war. The inefficiency of the present organisation of society causes a great many unpleasantnesses which must continue unless the cause is wiped out. The course of events has taken the direction which was determined by our social organisation, and changes -mostly for the worse-are inevitable.
On the other hand classes which are in a privileged position quite naturally try to retain the same economical, political and moral standards in order to secure permanency of their privileges. This is especially clearly shown since the war. The "pre-war" has become a watchword, just as if it were possible to return to pre-war conditions after all that has happened, just as if nothing has changed.
This particular habit of ignoring the course of events has produced a reaction in art which is now most clearly manifested in a new movement among Slav and Central European Expressionists. One of the principal features of this movement is a new magazine edited in Berlin by the Russian poet, I. Ehrenburg, who compares those who refuse to acknowledge that changes are inevitable with the persecutors of Galileo and calls his magazine "E pure se muove." This movement is also represented by the following art magazines : " Zenit " (Zagreb), ''Ma" (Vienna, published in Hungarian), "Cerven" (Prague), "Der Mann" (Berlin), etc.
About the time of Cezanne's death, a wave of originality and invention in painting swept all over the Continent. The first to appear on the scene were the Cubists.
The main object of Cubism was the graphic representation of the integrity of form. In order to obtain integrity, form is observed from all important points and the sum of all the different appearances in different perspectives is taken for the integral representation of the volume of the form observed.
The forms obtained in this way are not put on the canvas in a way which will suggest the original appearance of the object, but in a way which enables the artist to construct a new whole and to display to its utmost the play of light and dark. Cubist painting had no other aim but to represent volume and to elaborate as much as possible the effect of light. Movement was neglected in such a way that Cubism appeared as an entirely static art, and this gave rise to Futurism which went almost exclusively for movement. It treated human figure, landscape as well, only as an engine whose construction depends entirely on the speed of the objects, their interpenetration and the expansion of their forms beyond the visible limits. The difference between materials does not exist and Futurist plastic representation of sound is equal in conception to the representation of an engine. The archaism which occasionally appears in Cubism disappeared in Futurism.
At the same time a parallel movement was happening in Russia. The principal difference was that Gontcharova and Larionow went, at one time, exclusively for Russian peasant art, and as their inspirations were mostly fed by popular de-corative work they arrived at a kind of abstract painting, which quickly spread all over Russia and found its way to Germany. When this particular kind of painting reached Vasiliy Kandinsky-at that time a painter of no great merit-he took his chance and put forward "The Art of Spiritual Harmony." Influenced by Theosophy, he tried to establish a spiritual harmony, basing it on the warm and cold qualities of colour and their con-and ex-centric movements. The ex-centric movement (towards the spectator) is taken as bodily, and the concentric (away from the spectator) as spiritual. Every warm colour has its antithesis in a cold one. The antitheses white and black are points between which is a circle of all other antitheses called "the circle of life.'' The mixture of different colours augments or diminishes their warmth, changes their movements and is supposed to provoke spiritual emotions. The antitheses white and black Kandinsky describes in this way : white has two movements, (I) discordant, eternal discord, but with possibilities for the future (birth) and (2) ex-and con-centric. Black is an absolute discord, devoid of possibilities for the future (death). In this way he goes on to form the meaning of the different colours and stands, for an Art which will be entirely unrepresentative and purely spiritual.' He claims that his Art is absolutely emotional. Round Kandinsky started a small group of German and Russian artists, among whom were Franz Mark (killed in the last war), Paul Klee, Yawlensky, Otokar Kubin, and a little later on Jacoba van Heemskerck, Hjrten-Grunewald, Kurt Schwitters, Marc Chagall, etc. Just as Kandinsky's work was always dictated by Theosophical teaching so the other artists understood art in a way which gave it an entirely descriptive character. Every picture is supposed to be an expression of something. Sometimes it is merely an illustration (Kubin), sometimes it is an attempt to express a particular mood (Franz Mark), at other times it is a kind of sentimental shorthand description (Paul Klee). Naturally enough in all works done by these artists are felt all the influences of different contemporary and past currents in art. Literature and philosophy play a prominent part. The war has played its part too, and the muddle culminated in Dadaism, which hardly survived its first manifesto.
Mr. Ehrenburg and his friends are the heirs of this group of artists. To the old conglomerate of different theories now are added politics, and as a little originality is found to be necessary the politics are formulated in a rather confusing way (the politics of artists are always confused). There is an attempt at mysticism combined with science and Communism, and this stew is supposed to nourish the Super-Man.
It is very refreshing to see Dostoevsky mixed with Marinetti and dished up as an entirely new thing.
Photographs of skyscrapers, briar pipes, Atlantic liners and Charlie Chaplin play a great part in the documentation of the theory of the new Expressionism.
The Tour d'Eiffel is still a great idol and its soundness of construction, usefulness and beauty do not prevent the new apostles from missing the most essential qualities of art. Whatever appeal the Russian Revolution may have to the followers of the new Expressionist movement they cannot boast of understanding it. They are, judging by their works, the "jeunesse doree" of our time which parades revolutionary ideas as these have a sentimental appeal to them. Unfortunately this art is not preceding but following the development of society. Although this movement is a natural reaction to our life and to the parent movement of Expressionism it by no means helps art to move on; it is simply helping to make the old tottering building crash down more quickly and that is its only merit. I wish that artists in general would realise the fact that art is not like mechanics, where it is enough to patent a new notion to style oneself an inventor. R. A. STEPHENS.

Drama. By John Francis Hope.
To see the Old Vic crowded out on the first night of ''Peer Gynt" was a surprise, and for the benefit of those who may not be able. to see the production by March 17 I may say that two performances of it will be given on Saturday, April 15. It was an astonishing piece of work for all concerned; everybody played at concert pitch, and there were scenes, such as the troll scenes, and the saeter girls, that live in the memory.
The death of Ase was played by Miss Florence Buckton and Mr. Russell Thorndike in a manner worthy of Mr. Archer's description of this scene as "one of the supreme achievements of modern drama"; its pathetic beauty, its tragic irony, alone would make the production memorable.
Indeed, the whole production was so extraordinarily good that critics are exempted from the necessity of making excuses of any kind ; we are entitled to write of it without reservation, and to give full weight to whatever objections we may have. After seeing the production (I have arranged to see it again), I am convinced that nothing short of the whole play can ever be completely satisfactory.
Judging by the time taken at the Old Vic (about four hours and a half), I think that about six hours and a half would be necessary for a complete rendering. We were given nearly the complete text up to the end of Scene 10, Act 4; but the Egyptian scenes, including the madhouse scene, were cut.
The second and third scenes of Act 5 were cut; and Peer Gynt's narration at the end of Scene 4 was truncated.
I had to leave then, and shall not be able to say how much of the remainder was given until I have seen it again.
If we grant that it is necessary to cut the play, I think it is obvious that the Egyptian scenes, particularly the madhouse scene, are more important than the Moroccan ones. The whole purpose of the play is to show us Peer Gynt translating his romances into reality, and finding himself befooled by facts. It is more important that we should have represented the Moroccan "Prophet" scenes, which we do have, than the earlier successful commercial man scene ; and more important than either is the "Emperor" scene in the madhouse. This was the apex of Peer Gynt's imagining, here his megalomania reached its summit-€or he was not Nietzschean enough to imagine himself as superseding God. We cannot spare this scene; it is structurally necessary to the satire of spiritual delusion.
I grant that the scene is horrible, but Ibsen was using the "awful consequences" argument to purge us of romantic delusion; and if we cannot bear the crisis, we have no spiritual right to enjoy the satire. Peer Gynt is Everyman before his summons, accepting the subhuman troll values instead of the superhuman spiritual values; all his successes are but "fairy gold" at best; he can only be recognised as Emperor by lunatics after "the Absolute Reason has departed this life." That scene cannot be omitted without mutilation both of the dramatic and spiritual structure of the play.
The omission-of the funeral scene in Act 5 reminds me that the incident in Scene I, Act 3, wherein the lad chops off his finger to escape military service, was cut, as was also the following scene of the distraint on Ase's goods.
These scenes are not essential, but we do not willingly forgo anything that reveals the mother-love of Ase. As Mr. Archer says : "There is not a more lifelike creation in the whole range of drama"; and we take hardly any denial of the sight of her, the wee little spitfire of devotion. She at least (touches the heart in this satire of folly, and most of us, I think, must share Ibsen's complacency with this creation which Miss Florence Buckton played with such appeal. It is one more proof, if proof be necessary, that in Miss Buckton we have an actress not only of remarkable power, but of more remarkable versatility, a range that extends from Greek tragedy to a character study like Ase, taking Shakespeare's heroines and tragedy queens in its stride. But Peer Gynt by himself is enough for several articles; and when one has overcome the amazement at Mr. Russell Thorndike's prodigious feat of memory (I only noticed him pause twice for a line, and perhaps twice for a word) and the satisfaction at seeing a possible Peer Gynt on the stage, one begins to criticise. Peer is a dual personality, and Mr. Russell Thorndike only plays one of them. He is not a literal liar, as everyone except Ase believes him; he is, at the beginning, the adolescent full of possibilities which he expresses in romantic rhapsody, identifying himself with the great feats recorded in legend. Ne reverses Kingsley's admonition, "dream noble things, not do them all day long." As his mother says : Ah, and yet it's true enough-Something might have come of you, Had you not been steeped for ever In your lies and trash and moonshine. He is a Don Quizote, but not of chivalry; that pathetic figure, an uncreative poet who, like the man of culture, uses his memory instead of his imagination, and like any Philistine, makes a convention of imaginative creation by repeating it without adding reality to it. Ibsen is always suspected of symbolism, and perhaps Peer Gynt represents the poet in an unsuitable environment, frustrated in expression, and regressing to reverie and day-dreaming, quoting but not creating. It was Ibsen who said : "'The old beauty is no longer beautiful, the new truth no longer true"; and without that prophecy of the Third Kingdom which Ibsen expressed in "Emperor and Galilean, " that divination of the World-Will, a poet can only regress, and live again the fantasies of the past. Peer Gynt sees the glorious possibilities, he sees the end he desires from the beginning; like Leonardo experimenting with varnish before he had begun his picture, Peer sees the gorgeous building he will make of his outlaw's hut; but he achieves only ignoble realities.
His acceptance of the troll maxim : "To thyself be enough" : is indicative of frustration; a society that provides no outlet for the dreams of its youth breeds the egotism of neurasthenia, and finally the cynical acceptance of things as they are-in other words, denies its own future.
It was this side of Peer Gynt's character that Mr. Russell Thorndike did not express. He lacks the poetic temperament that alone can give reality to these rhapsodies. Peer Gynt at first hardly knows the difference between what he imagines and what really happens, but in Mr. Thorndike's rendering he seems an almost conscious liar, and is real only in the more brutal qualties of his character. The first meeting with Solveig, for example, demands a sudden transformation from the uncouthness of his treatment of the peasant girls to an abashed appreciation of the beauty of a pure spirit, an awe-struck access of grace. But these alternations between beauty and brutality Mr. Thorndike did not reveal; and his Peer Gynt lacked the visionary touch; for him the heavens were never opened; and he showed us merely the awkwardness of a village lad in the presence of a respectable and pious maiden. THE MASK. Those stubborn lips are silent yet And unrelaxed that heavy brow As when the Master's hand had set The final shape he would allow, Slow years have brought their merchandise To spread before those empty eyes.
I have seen faces strong as thine Seeming as changeless, day by day. Yet age hath wrought her slow decline Or sorrow come with swift decay ; Yet the brief labour of an hour In thee withstands, in silent power.
T. A Collins.

Views and Reviews.
THE JESUITS. THIS history of 937 pages" is written for the general reader, and is based upon the results of researches promoted by Father Martin, who became General of the Society in 1892.
It must be admitted that the general reader has learned what little he knows of this Society chiefly from novelists, who have found in the Society of Jesus a convenient machine for their plots. Certainly their missionary work, particularly in South America, has not been ignored by writers of travel books; but we come to the reading of such a volume as this with a prejudice inculcated we know not how or by whom, with a predisposition to regard the Jesuits as the villains of European politics, whatever they may have been in the mission field. Few of us have ever met a Jesuit ; I have met only one acknowledged Jesuit, the late Father Tyrrell; and vague prejudices are not dispelled by lack of acquaintance with reality To the general reader, then, this history will serve to enlighten, if not to remove, a prejudice; if we cannot determine the truth of the accusations made against them, we can at least judge them by what they avouch and proclaim as admirable. First, it is admitted that the prejudice against the Order is not confined to Protestants.
Various Catholic Orders at different times demanded its suppression, and the Catholic King of Spain, Charles III, was perhaps the most brutal of all those who worked for its suppression. Even the Pope who ordered the suppression was, we are told, afraid of being poisoned by them; and it was evidently believed that the Jesuits were capable of anything.
We are asked to believe that these fears and suspicions and hatreds were quite unwarranted by facts, that they were the result of a widespread conspiracy of calumny against the Society -in short, that not the Jesuits, but their enemies, were guilty of the crimes alleged against them. It is a little disconcerting to find the Society rehabilitated in the white robe of a blameless life, but the author's use of documentary evidence, and argument and inference from it, seems convincing. It is at least credible that the Society has been the scapegoat of Christendom. and that those who attacked it were animated by all evil and uncharitableness.
But the general reader cannot be expected to undertake the historical research necessary to determine the truth of this defence. "By a judicious selection of facts you can prove anything,'' said Cardinal Newman; and nobody ever denied that the Jesuits were capable of a judicious selection of facts. The general reader determines the credibility of a witness much as Huxley did in his "The Value of Witness to the Miraculous"; if the same person puts forward patently incredible statements as of equal authority with others that are, a priori, credible, our reliance on the value of his testimony to matters of fact is shaken. When we are told, on p. 85 of this book, that Xavier's body was buried in quicklime in 1552, that two months later, "not only was the flesh found to be intact, but the face wore a ruddy hue, and blood flowed from an incision made below the knee," nay, more, that "Xavier rests there [in God] yet, and his body is still incorrupt," we can only say that a man who puts forward such a lie as worthy of general belief is capable of saying anything. We are told, on page 378, that "Catholic philosophy is prevented from going over the abyss by the possession of a higher knowledge than unassisted human reason could ever attain.
Thus protected, it speculates with an audacity of which those who are not so provided can have no conception." I certainly shall not deny their audacity. Mr. Sinclair has forgotten to put a price on his book, but as it is about the same size as " The Brass Check," we presume that the same amount, 60 cents post paid, would suffice. Mr. Sinclair has cast into fictional form a number of incidents from the life of a spy (the facts are cited In an appendix), incidents that are credible only in the sober form of Government reports and criminal proceedings. Its real value to English readers is that it reveals a consistent policy in the economic class-war of America which we have seen being applied in the Government of Ireland. America, apparently, is not, politically, so advanced as we are; great business organisations there maintain secret service agents and custodians of law and order, but these organisations are not recognised, or recruited, or supported by the Government, as our Cadets and Black-and-Tans were. It is impossible to dismiss Mr. Sinclair's story as exaggerated, or as peculiar tol America; but for the occasional intrusion of American slang, it might be a record of the history of England during the war, or of Ireland at the present day. We are not sure that we can parallel the arrest of the brother of a Senator for quoting the Declaration of Independence, or of a clergyman for quoting the wrong passages of Isaiah; but for most of the other incidents, we can find parallels without over-taxing our memory. The point, that Mr. Sinclair makes, and it is one that the Labour movement should ponder, is this : " Any business man will agree that when ' Big Business ' has interests to protect, it must and will protect them. So far as possible it will make use of the public authorities; but when through corruption or fear of politics these fail, ' Big Business ' has to act for itself. In the Colorado coal strike, the coal companies raised the money to pay the State' militia, and recruited new companies of militia from, their private detectives." The fact shows that America is not yet a civilised country ; here, the Government recruits by advertisement the men it needs for such' purposes, and puts up a Secretary in the House of Commons to justify their actions.

A Defence of Liberty.
By the Hon. Oliver Brett.
Disquisitions of this kind always remind us of Tennyson's America may invent, but we perfect.
(Fisher Unwin. 12s. 6d. net.) couplet : And God fulfils Himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
We admit all that Mr. Brett says of liberty; it is not only a fine ideal, but a necessity of everyday life--although Mr. Brett seems to regard it as a goal rather than a condition of expression. But ordered life (and life, even in the physiological sense, is nothing but a maintenace of order among inter-related normals) is not expressed by any one principle; we can have too much of a good thing, and a political constitution that aimed at liberty only would end in anarchy. Liberty is one of the persons or principles of the trinity of which Equality and Fraternity are the others; no constitution can he founded on any one of these principles, but no constitution can adapt itself to changing conditions without temporarily enhancing the importance of one or other of them. But Mr. Brett poses the antithesis of Conservatism v. Liberalism, identifies Liberalism with Liberty, and all ordered government with Conservatism.
Socialism he proves to his awn satisfaction is Conservative; in the old phrase: "The Socialists are all Tories." But curiously enough, he identifies Liberalism not only with Liberty (which would not distinguish him from an Anarchist) but with some other principle that is not defined. He asserts that " Democracy, like every other political device, has two roads on which it may travel, backwards towards State control, or forwards towards individual liberty That is the issue between the Conservative and the Liberal mind.
It is the business of Liberalism to see that Democracy makes the latter its choice.'' He, argues that Liberalism "is bound to take the side of liberty against control, but it can only do so effectively if it is prepared to assist Labour to obtain economic security.
It must take over the work that has been so wastefully and inadequately performed by the Trade Unions. " How Liberalism can do this except by State action we are not told; and as the Trade Unions happen to represent free association €or the purpose of obtaining economic security, and were quite' definitely attempts to free Labour from State control, we do not quite understand what Mr. Brett is driving at unless it is Union-smashing. Certainly, the following passage from pp. 242-3 indicates a peculiarly Liberal frame of mind.
" Capitalism, like every other organism, possesses the instinct of self-preservation.
It is aware that the powerful force of Socialism is pledged to its destruction.
Between it and that destruction there sttands nothing but the alternative form of evolution' that Liberalism represents.
Whatever, therefore, Capitalism may find distasteful in Liberal policy, it is nevertheless bound to support it financially and otherwise. If, through lack of' money, Liberalism fails, it is Capital that will suffer [not Labour, we may interpolate]. So strong is the position of Liberalism as the buttress of private property that it can prevent the man that pays the piper from calling the tune [this, is, a peculiar idea of individual liberty, we interpolate].
It can, boldly declare its determination to see that Capital neither abuses its power nor obtains a disproportionate share of the wealth produced, because it is obvious that the only alternative to the acceptance by Capital of Liberal policy entails, not a mere guardianship of the ring in the interest of fair play, but a knock-out blow to one of the combatants concerned.
It must be pointed out to Capital how completely its continued existence is dependent upon the success of Liberalism, a fact which, when emphasised, will make it clear that Liberalism is the master and not the slave of Capital. The subscriber to the party fund will receive a definite return for his money in continuance of the system by which that money was made." The italics are ours. Apparently, Liberalism is in the paradoxical position of believing in evolution without change, of being on " the side of liberty against control " at the same time that it guarantees " the continuance of the system, by which that money was made." Somebody has said : "Liberty is never given; it is always taken" : but we are not taking the Liberty of Mr. Brett, which resembles so closely the it of the Liberty and Property Defence League. The Mother and the Infant. By Edith V. Eckhard. 6s. net.) " This has been called the children's century, but are the children yet secure of conditions which are favourable to mental, moral and physical growth?'' It must be obvious, without any special study such as Miss Eckhard has given to the subject, that they are not. And her account of the various efforts, voluntary and official, that are being made to cope with the conditions under which the majority of our children are born and reared fails to inspire any confidence in their effectiveness. What can be expected from Welfare Centres, Day Nurseries, Home Helps and the like so long as poverty still remains the greatest evil from which the poor, and the children of the poor, suffer?" Up the white road you pass with your mules your eyes And I envy you passionately your simple acceptance of "Bury the child and dance at the wedding and to-morrow Although innocence is but a quality of the mind Ignorance such as yours is a quality of the soul.
If I took all the stars from the night sky to make a chain If I took all the roses from southern gardens to make And all the cypresses to make sweet and solemn dreams When little lambs bleat in the fold, And every bird begins to cheep, 'Tis then the coltsfoot spreads its gold On every unclean rubbish heap.
When in the fullness of the year The meadows don their bravery, How rank the coltsfoot's leaves appear Amid the summer's finery.
Yet even when the world displays The wealth that May and June amass, I cannot undelighted gaze On these rank leaves among the grass, In gratitude remembering HOW, when Spring's pageantry begins, 'The coltsfoot triumphs, rioting In beauty among sardine tins.
ALEXANDER GRAY.
LEAL. Dost thou find falseness (Since that thou sorrowest) In all thy brethren? " Yea, they are water, High and not humble, But all unstable." Seek the wind's purity, And the snow her chasteness; Behold the sun, steadfast.
" Pure the wind flieth, The snow is a virgin, The sun abideth; But these are of heaven; Though men have falseness These are my brethren.
Wherefore my faring Is with my kinsmen Though through all sorrow." RUTH PITTER.